Thanks to state budget cuts for the arts, the staff at the Florida Center for the Literary Arts had to brew this year's 26th annual Miami Book Fair with a smaller pile of hops, but the product still packs more than the legal limit of intellectual star power.

From rock innovators to former vice presidents to actresses who make puppet porn, this year's fair has a flavor for every cultural thirst. "Miami is the one place where all authors want to come," says chief book bartender and fair chairman Mitchell Kaplan.

Kick the week off right with President Barack Obama's wordsmith of choice, poet Elizabeth Alexander, who reprises her reading of "Praise Song for the Day" from January's inauguration. Her Sunday 5 p.m. reading is followed at 7 p.m. by Canadian authorial bad-ass Margaret Atwood, who drops a new novel, The Year of the Flood (Doubleday, $26.95), for the first time since 2005. The rest of the "Evenings With..." sessions unfold like a choice international selection of taps at the greatest word bar south of Heaven.

Thursday's Isabella Rossellini appearance is like that crazy blueberry-infused Trappist ale with a twist of wormwood. The famous actress — who can ever forget her turn as Dorothy Vallens in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986)? — screens her series of short films called Green Porno (2008), in which Rossellini and others don animal costumes and act out mating rituals. Schwing!

But a word hound can't stay sloshed on "Evenings With..." alone, and the culminating weekend — beginning with the Friday, November 13 street fair and running until the last event Sunday, November 15 — will likely toss more than a few of us off the wagon. And who better to ask about choice vintages than the perennial imbibers at New Times? Over the next two weeks, our dipsomaniacs will dish out a series of author-tastings online and in print that will have you sneaking out the back door on your wives, husbands, and children.

And all you'll be able to muster is: "When it hits your ears, it's just so good..."

To get you started, Homer, here are three authors you can't live without seeing in person:

Minor television personality and big-time genius John Hodgman is an expert on things that don't matter: Presidents who have hooks for hands. The perfect name for a hobo. Monster hunters. His new novel, More Information Than You Require, reads like a gift sent from the god of attention deficit disorders. It's a trivia book full of fake facts, footnotes, and lists — penned with a tone you'd find in the pages of McSweeney's. "Its grab-bag nature wasn't a choice — more of a reflection of my adult brain," Hodgman explains. "And my hatred of long paragraphs or even complete sentences."

Did we mention it's hilarious? Or that Hodgman is somehow able to make the subject "Speaking of Parasites" funny? Perhaps best known as "that guy in the Mac commercials," Hodgman began as a freelance writer in New York City. He then became a literary agent and humor editor for New York Times Magazine. Eventually, he says, he was able "to fool someone into thinking a collection of my insane obsessions might be worth publishing." His first book, The Areas of My Expertise, was written, in part, on the subway and in Central Park. It is also a collection of made-up facts.

After Hodgman plugged the book on The Daily Show, producers liked his comedic style enough to invite him back for a regular gig. He's since been featured as the "Resident Expert" on the show more than 30 times. Those TV appearances have made people "smile at [him] more on the street," he says. But alas, fewer folks are privy to his literary work. One thing he wants us know about his latest: "That it exists!"

John Hodgman reads from More Information Than You Require Saturday, November 14, at 5 p.m. in Building 3, Chapman.

— Natalie O'Neill

Ruth Reichl comes to the Miami Book Fair to plug a huge, 1,000-plus recipe cookbook called Gourmet Today on the heels of the announcement there will be no more Gourmet magazine tomorrow. That's sort of like Bernie Madoff going on a financial self-help book tour in the weeks after his Ponzi scheme imploded. In other words, this will be one of the hottest events at the fair.

Gourmet Today is not a retrospective of recipes culled from the publication's 68-year history, so it doesn't come across as a self-important swan song. Instead, this serious tome (meaning no photos) is steeped in the titular today and stewed in new ingredients, techniques, and nutritional concerns. "I wrote my first cookbook in 1971," Reichl recalls, "and when I see the difference between what was available then and the food that now fills my supermarket, it makes me want to go dancing down the aisles."

Her years as the New York Times restaurant reviewer, followed by time spent deftly steering Gourmet into the 21st Century, give Reichl a uniquely informed perspective of the food world to share with her audience. And as a speaker, she tends to be unflinchingly honest.

Unfortunately, she didn't agree to speak with us, so if you want to know more about Gourmet's demise, you'll have to ask her yourself at the Q&A following her appearance. (Sample: Do you ever lament that it was all your fault?)

There comes a point in an iconic entertainer's life when that person passes from human to visual trademark. This icon might age or change hairstyles, but people will generally remember a version of him or her as if frozen in amber. A visual timeline of one such transformation — in gonzo rock frontman Iggy Pop — is one of the most compelling recommendations for The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story. The Abrams-published coffee-table tome was shot entirely by L.A.-based rock photographer Robert Matheu. Working for the late, great Creem magazine in the '70s, Matheu forged an early friendship with Pop and his band, the Stooges, capturing some of their most legendary performances.

Flip through the book and watch as Pop, born James Osterberg, begins in the late '60s as — well, if not apple-cheeked, at least a relatively fresh-faced Motor City rock 'n' roll kid. Gaze in amazement as he enters the hanging-with-Bowie years and discovers the wonders of facial glitter and peel-off pants. Then pinpoint the time he morphs into Iggy Pop the brand: It seems to come late in the Stooges era, when the hard living and body thrashing suddenly etch the frontman's cheeks.

But the book isn't entirely the Iggy Pop show. After all, it's a story about the Stooges, which refreshingly focuses on the band. Contributing scribes' essays chart the genesis of the band's early albums and then skip over Pop's solo years, right on to the 2005 reunion record, The Weirdness. Matheu's images are a visual feast, from a fashion anthropology standpoint, and often boast an almost elegiac quality. With the deliciously grainy quality of 35mm film, double-page spreads capture the momentary calm in the Stooges storm. Piss-off-your-parents bonus: Alice Cooper wrote the introductory essay!

Iggy Pop and Robert Matheu talk about The Stooges: The Authorized and Illustrated Story Saturday, November 14, at 6:30 p.m. in Building 3, Chapman.

— Arielle Castillo

Tickets to the "Evenings With ..." presentations cost ten dollars per reading. All book fair readings take place downtown at Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus. The "Evenings With..." events happen at Chapman (Building 3, 2nd Floor).

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